Week 2 of refereeing the Lego robotics competition. Last week's event was only a couple blocks from my house. This weekend's event was 30 miles away! It was a long, long drive, especially on Saturday when the temperature dropped 30 degrees and the rain started pouring down, but at least I wasn't working outdoors like the poor soccer refs I saw out the school windows.
I worked with a really good group of people this weekend. The guy next to me is the head ref for the high school competitions. They talked him into ref'ing one middle school event, because his granddaughter is on a team. They made a new rule this year that every team has to "donate" one volunteer, because the game is getting so popular they don't have enough people to manage it.
Some of the volunteers really get into the spirit of acting a little goofy and wearing silly costumes. How could you not when you're surrounded by middle school kids? The refs never wear any crazy kind of head gear, because we can't risk it falling off onto the robots (at least, that's my excuse).
Last week's emcee wore a tuxedo to the competition with a red bow tie and cumberbund. This week's emcee wore a water bottle hat and water belt in honor of the theme
Hydrodynamics. The kids all called him
Aqua Dude. He had 10 water bottles hanging off his belt that he handed out to kids whenever they asked. He ended up giving away 8 cases of water over the weekend.
They did a lot of different things this weekend, like starting out the day with a parade of teams. The kids ran in so fast, though, they are nothing more than a blur in the photo. You can imagine if they started the day with this much energy, how much they had after sucking on the candy all the teams were giving out to each other.
They play music constantly throughout the day, but during one of the breaks, they put on the
Cha Cha Slide and everyone started dancing in the aisles.
Each team is given a table to set up a display. Most teams just put up a poster and wear a costume. This team made a giant robot box on wheels. I'm not really sure how this related to the
Hydro theme, because I never get to see the projects (they are presented in a different part of the building).
This was my favorite robot. It could really move around the table quickly without bumping into other models. I think in my "spare" time, I'll have to try to build one for myself.
